By Brian A. Catalucci, MS
Over the course of people’s lives, many have invested time in many kinds of pets: from horses to dogs, to potbellied pigs, to mice, and even more exotic creatures. Many have found pleasure in their relationship with their pets, and they have aided their owners in their lives and daily activities. Animals can have very close relationships with humans; one well-known example is dogs.[1] I have had extensive experience with these canine friends, involving very close relationships with them, to the point of grieving when one has passed away. There is a biblical reason for these close relationships, and it all starts in the Book of Genesis, chapter one. This biblical reason is why dogs (and other creatures) can and do dream.
In Genesis one, the Lord spells out how He created the universe, the Earth, and all life, and He gives a day-by-day account of the sequence of His creation. In Genesis 1:1 the Lord states that He created the heavens and the Earth. This is called the space-time continuum,[2] including all the dimensions of space and time. Here He uses the word “bara” (בָּרָא),[3] which means shape or create in Hebrew. Bara is translated as “create” when God is the subject. He is the only one who can create something out of nothing. He created and inserted all the mass, energy, and information that was needed to build and shape the universe, including the Earth in its formless and void state.
During the first four days of creation, He prepared the earth to be inhabited[4]. He made light, the expanse, landmasses, seas, grasses, plants, fruit trees, the sun, moon, and stars. Notice that the Lord uses the word made on days one to four. He uses the Hebrew word עָשָׂה (asah), which means do or make.[5] He does not use the word bara as He did in verse one. The Lord then took the “stuff” He had created in verse one and used it to make everything he did on those first four days. But, on days five and six of the creation week, the Lord does something very special; He again uses the word create. He states in Genesis 1:20-21:
20 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens 21 And God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.” (NASB).
On day five, God created all the flying creatures and all creatures that lived in the sea; He created them according to their kind. He created fishes, whales, sharks, megalodons, octopuses, coelacanths, dolphins, and others. He created all the creatures that fly: all the bird kinds, the eagles, the hawks, and all the smaller birds. The Lord called them nephesh chaya: living souls (ָּנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה)[6]. The King James Version interprets them as “the moving creature that hath life”, and the New American Standard, calls them living creatures. These are correct translations of the original Hebrew text, and it is attained by using proper hermeneutical and grammatical-historical exegesis, incorporating the context of verses 20, 21, and the surrounding verses.
Nephesh can mean wind, soul, or spirit, but the correct context for these verses is that the Lord is creating swarms of physical things that live in the sea and fly through the air, not wind or spirits. They should be interpreted as animals or creatures. Using this context, nephesh is properly translated as soul, and chaya as alive or living.[7] On day five and six, the Lord is creating something very different from anything he has created so far; God has created living souls out of nothing. That is why the King James Version and the New American Standard translate them as living creatures. On these days the Lord has created life itself where there was no life before.
These created creatures are alive, and many have shown themselves as conscious and self-aware. They can think, they have an animal type of logic, (i.e., they can make decisions), they can learn, and they have emotions. To be sure, there are many hierarchical levels of nephesh. The nephesh of a dog, for example, is magnitudes above that of a fly. Dogs can feel fear, love, and hate. They are intelligent and show loyalty, companionship, and friendship. Some have the courage to go into battle with our soldiers. These are attributes of self-aware creatures; the Lord created a great miracle on days five and six.[8]
Wait a minute, Brian! Are you saying that the creatures created on days five and six have souls? Yes; that is what the Scriptural text is clearly stating. Of course, I am not talking about the same exact kind of soul that God gave humans, and that all dogs go to heaven; rather a soul in this context and instance means they’re alive, living creatures (nephesh chaya). In fact, I would say that God made certain types of animals like dogs, house cats, and horses, especially for mankind, because they live and work so closely with us.
We can take dogs for a walk and jog together, play games like catch and tug, and they can respond to commands and perform tasks. (Try to get an apple tree to do that.) They make choices about doing one thing rather than another. They’re intelligent (an animal intelligence), they’re smart, and most importantly, they have life. I call this ability of living creatures to express themselves in this manner, as personality. I equate nephesh with personality. Nephesh expresses the “essence” and personality of who and what they are. Anyone who has ever had pets of any kind would agree not only that they have a personality, but that every one of them has a different personality.
Tomatoes, watermelons, and corn do not have a nephesh, are not alive, and have zero personality. The vegetation created on day three is replicating, cellular structures, used for food, clothing, and shelter. In Genesis 1, God states; I have given every green plant for food.[9] When you eat them, you don’t kill them, as they are not biblically alive. Nowhere in Scripture does it use life or nephesh with plants, trees, fruit, or grasses. Animals are a different story altogether as they are alive. After day six, the Earth is teeming with animal life in the air, life in the seas, and life on dry land.
It is interesting to note, that when the Lord creates Adam on day six, He also calls him, nephesh chaya,[10] a living soul, but with an important distinction from all the creatures created on days five and six. Adam was created in the image of God. The Lord gave humans many of His attributes, and He gave them something that animals do not have; a spirit – giving us morality, fellowship, and accountability with the Lord. Animals do not have a spirit and are amoral. To review: plants have bodies, animals have a body and a soul, and mankind has a body, soul, and spirit.
This brings us to the question, why can dogs dream? They can dream because they were created as living creatures, and having life is an important qualifier for the ability to dream. There is no biblical evidence that plants and vegetation can dream, as the Bible states they are not alive. There is no scientific evidence that plants and vegetation are alive and can dream. Dreaming — and sleep for that matter — is a product of only life itself.
One biologist, Glen Kuban, states, simply about the ability to dream. “By all evidence, you need a brain or at least a central nervous system to be conscious or sentient in even a rudimentary way, and no trees or other plants have either.”[11] According to researchers at MIT, animals have complex dreams, and animal brains “follow the same series of sleeping states as ours do”.
These MIT researchers also report that they may know what some animals are dreaming about. “No one knew for certain that animals dreamed the way we do, which can involve replaying events or at least components of events that occurred while we were awake,” wrote Matthew Wilson of MIT’s Center for Learning and Memory. “We looked at the firing patterns of a collection of individual cells to determine the content of rats’ dreams. We know that they are dreaming and their dreams are connected to actual experiences.”[12]
Rats, like humans, “go through multiple stages of sleep, from slow-wave sleep to REM[13] sleep”, and “in humans, it is during REM sleep that most dreaming occurs.” But the interesting part, noted in the report, is “the unique signature of brain activity that was created as the animal ran. The correlation was so close that the researchers found that as the animal dreamed, they could reconstruct where it would be in the maze if it were awake and whether the animal was dreaming of running or standing still.”
In another article, naturalist Michael Ellis reports that “Sleep is incredibly important to higher vertebrates such as reptiles, birds, and mammals. Continued disruption of sleep, as the parents of newborns and the CIA know well — is a torture technique. And while the function of sleep is not totally understood, we do know that it’s absolutely vital to the health of animals.”[14]
It seems that some mammals can sleep in strange ways reports Ellis. “Studies of both captive and wild cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) have revealed a most fascinating adaptation: half the brain appears to stay awake while the other hemisphere drops into what we call slow-wave sleep, or deep sleep (i.e., unihemispheric sleep)… Bottlenose dolphins show that each side of the brain gets a total of about four hours of “sleep” in short stints as the opportunity arises over 24 hours. Half of the brain nods off and the opposite eye closes while the other wakes up and helps the animal survive.”
It is easy to observe the dreaming states in our canine friends as they sleep. They twitch, or move their legs as if they were chasing something; they may whine, growl, and bark as they sleep. Yes, dogs do dream, as do many mammals, birds, and aquatic creatures do. They can dream because God created them as living creatures and they are alive.
All of this shows what an awesome God we have, as He gave life to many creatures in our world. God’s work can surely be a witness to who He is, and what He has done as our Creator and savior. As Romans 1:24 states; For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
[1] Close relationships occur with many animals: cats, horses, rabbits, and others. The point is humans can be very close to animals.
[2] The space-time continuum, https://www.livescience.com/space-time.html
[3] Bara, בָּרָא, Strongs 1254, to shape or create.
[4] Isaiah 45:18 NASB.
[5] Asah, עָשָׂה Strongs 6213, do or make.
[6] Nepheshנֶפֶשׁ , Strong’s, 5315, soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion, and passion – these are definitions related to a living person or creature. It is the essence of who or what they are.
[7] Chaya, חַיָּה Strong’s 2416, alive, living, to live
[8] The Lord uses the word “made”, on day six for the land animals. Life was created on day five, so they were made.
[9] Gen 1:30 NASB “I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
[10] Gen 2:6 NASB
[11] Glen Kuban, Biology, PaleoScene, https://www.quora.com/do-plants-sleep-If-yes-can-they-have-dreams?share=1
[12] Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jan. 25, 2001 – journal Neuron, https://news.mit.edu/2001/dreaming
[13] REM – Rapid Eye Movement of the sleep cycle.
[14] Michael Ellis, How Do Marine Mammals Sleep?, August 22, 2016, https://baynature.org/article/marine-mammals-sleep/